Go Steal Things Some Place Else, Gambit

One of my coworkers has a bootleg copy of the complete X-Men Evolution series. Which is handy since a quick Amazon search suggests they never released the 4th season. I hadn't seen much of the later seasons, so we spent off-hours through the fall watching it the whole way through.

One thing I find kind of funny is how irritated I was when Gambit showed up as part of Magneto's crew. It wasn't who he was working for, it was that he showed up at all. It's funny because I hadn't thought of myself as a Gambit hater. He was never a favorite, but I thought his power was cool*, the staff seemed like a good idea to create space to use projectiles, the trench coat looked nice (even if the rest of the outfit is a disaster), and he got to flirt with Rogue, and not get put through a wall. He had to have something going for him. The parts didn't add up to a complete character I liked, but there were enjoyable aspects. Obliviousness of youth, I guess.

Somewhere along the line, he wore out his welcome. He comes off as less charming now, more sleazy. Finding out in the comics he'd been married the whole time he was putting moves on Rogue didn't help much.

It seems like he's written to play with people, use them to his advantage. Mystique does the same thing (not in the same way, though), and I don't care for her, either. At least Gambit hasn't tended to be a good guy in the more recent cartoons. He was grey at best in Evolution, and I happened to catch a Wolverine & the X-Men episode recently where he was working for Senator Kelly to undermine Genosha. He toyed with Polaris' affections in that one, though he at least felt guilty about it afterward. In general, I don't think he gets kicked in the head sufficiently for pulling that stuff. He always has an excuse, or the person is forgiving enough to let it slide.

Of course, Gambit also seems to be considerably older than the girls he flirts with in the cartoons (he certainly doesn't appear high school age in Evolution like Rogue), which makes it creepy. His 'page boy haircut' as my coworker put it, in Evolution didn't help things either. It made him look like a dork. A creepy, underage skirt chasing dork.

* I'm not much good at throwing cards, though. Or shuffling them, even. I'd have to throw round objects instead, maybe marbles. Those are small. Kind of noisy, though.